CALT-TH-2020-004 5 The AdS5 S Superstring × John H. Schwarz1 Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics California Institute of Technology 452-48 Pasadena, CA 91125, USA Abstract 5 The duality between the type IIB superstring theory in an AdS5 S back- × ground with N units of five-form flux and = 4 super Yang–Mills theory with a N U(N) gauge group has been studied extensively. My version of the construction of the superstring world-sheet action is reviewed here. This paper is dedicated to Michael Duff on the occasion of his 70th birthday. arXiv:2004.09661v1 [hep-th] 20 Apr 2020 [email protected] 1 Introduction I am pleased to contribute to this volume honoring my good friend Michael Duff on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Although we never collaborated, we have had lively scientific discussions, and each of us has influenced the other’s research. In the early 1980s, when Michael Green and I were developing superstring theory, extra dimensions were not yet fashionable. However, this began to change as a result of the work of Michael Duff and his collaborators exploring compactifications of 11-dimensional supergravity [1]. This work attracted a community of followers who acquired expertise that would prove useful in the subsequent development of superstring theory and M theory. Superstring theory was originally developed for a Minkowski spacetime geometry. (For reviews see [2][3][4].) This is the easiest case to handle mathematically, but it is not the only possibility. In particular, there is great interest in Anti de Sitter (AdS) geometries for studies of AdS/CFT duality. This manuscript will review the specific case of the type 5 IIB superstring in an AdS5 S background with N units of five-form flux, which is dual × to = 4 super Yang–Mills theory with a U(N) gauge group [5]. This is an especially N interesting example – sometimes referred to as the “hydrogen atom” of AdS/CFT. It has a large group of symmetries. In particular, it is maximally supersymmetric (32 supercharges). In addition, there are two tunable dimensionless parameters: the string coupling constant and the ratio between the curvature radius and the string length scale. These are related by AdS/CFT duality to the Yang–Mills coupling constant and the rank of the gauge group. In the Minkowski spacetime setting, the free superstring spectrum was identified and shown not to contain ghosts or tachyons in the critical spacetime dimension, which is 10 (nine space and one time). Scattering amplitudes for n massless external on-shell particles can be constructed perturbatively in the string coupling constant gs. The most fundamental examples are the type IIA and type IIB superstring theories, which only involve closed oriented strings and have maximal supersymmetry. For these theories the massless states comprise a supergravity multiplet, and the conserved supercharges consist of two Majorana– Weyl spinors, each of which has 16 real components. In the type IIA case the two spinors have opposite chirality (or handedness), and the theory is parity conserving. In the type IIB case they have the same chirality, and the theory is parity violating. It is a nontrivial fact that the type IIB theory has no gravitational anomalies [6]. String theories have a fundamental length scale, ls, called the string scale. In units with ~ ′ 2 = c = 1, one also defines the “Regge-slope parameter” α = ls and the fundamental string tension T = (2πα′)−1. The string coupling constant is determined by the vacuum value 1 of a massless scalar field φ , called the dilaton, g = eφ . n-particle on-shell scattering s h i amplitudes for both type II theories have a single Feynman diagram at each order of the perturbation expansion. At g loops the unique string theory Feynman diagram is a genus g Riemann surface with n punctures associated to the external particles. This two-dimensional manifold is a Euclideanized string world sheet. The g-loop amplitude is then given by an integral over the 3g + n 3 complex-dimensional moduli space of such punctured Riemann − surfaces. These amplitudes are free of UV divergences. There are two basic approaches to incorporating the fermionic degrees of freedom.2 The first one, called the RNS formalism, involves fermionic (i.e., Grassmann valued) world-sheet fields that transform as world-sheet spinors and spacetime vectors. One of the shortcomings of the RNS formalism is that nonzero backgrounds for fields belonging to the RR sector are difficult to incorporate. The second basic approach, called the GS formalism, utilizes fermionic world-sheet fields that transform as world-sheet scalars and spacetime spinors. It can handle background RR fields and it makes spacetime supersymmetry manifest. However, the rules for constructing multiloop amplitudes have not been worked out in the GS formal- 5 ism. This paper will describe type IIB superstring theory in an AdS5 S background. Since × this background includes a nonzero RR field, a five-form field strength, the GS formalism is best suited to this problem. Maldacena’s original paper proposing AdS/CFT duality drew attention to three (previ- 7 ously known) maximally supersymmetric geometries containing AdS factors [5]. AdS4 S 4 5 × and AdS7 S are M-theory backgrounds, whereas AdS5 S is a type IIB superstring × × theory background. The latter case can be studied in greatest detail, because superstring theory is better understood than M theory, which does not have a dimensionless coupling constant. The dual conformal field theory (CFT) in this case is four-dimensional = 4 N super Yang–Mills theory with a U(N) gauge group. The integer parameter N corresponds to the amount of self-dual five-form flux, the nonzero RR field, in the 10d geometry. The goal of this paper is to describe the world-sheet action of a type IIB superstring 5 in the AdS5 S background geometry, with the appropriate self-dual five-form flux. The × isometry group of type IIB superstring theory in this background is given by the supergroup P SU(2, 2 4). This problem was originally studied in the GS formalism [7][8][9] using a | formulation based on the quotient space P SU(2, 2 4)/SO(4, 1) SO(5). This paper will | × summarize closely related much later work using a slightly different approach [10]. It is based on three world-sheet one-form supermatrices whose complete dependence on the ten bosonic coordinates and the 32 Grassmann coordinates is explicit. We will also review the 2There are also other approaches, such as Berkovits’ “pure spinor” formalism. 2 proof that this action describes an integrable theory [11][12][13][14]. 1.1 The bosonic truncation 5 6 The unit-radius sphere S can be described as a submanifold of Ê zˆ zˆ =(z1)2 +(z2)2 + ... +(z6)2 =1. (1) · 3 Similarly, the unit-radius anti de Sitter space AdS5 can be described by yˆ yˆ = (y0)2 +(y1)2 + ... +(y4)2 (y5)2 = 1, (2) · − − − 4,2 which is a submanifold of Ê . These formulas make the symmetries SO(6) and SO(4, 2), respectively, manifest. When we add fermions these groups will be replaced by their covering 5 groups, which are SU(4) and SU(2, 2). In this notation the AdS5 S metric of radius R × takes the form ds2 = R2(dyˆ dyˆ + dzˆ dzˆ). (3) · · The induced world-volume metric of a probe p-brane with local coordinates σα, α = 0, 1,...,p is G (σ)= ∂ zˆ(σ) ∂ zˆ(σ)+ ∂ yˆ(σ) ∂ yˆ(σ). (4) αβ α · β α · β As usual, the functionsz ˆ(σ) andy ˆ(σ) describe the spacetime embedding of the brane. In this work we are concerned with the superstring for which p = 1. The bosonic part of the radius R superstring action can be written in the general coordinate invariant form 2 R 2 αβ S = d σ√ hh Gαβ, (5) −4πα′ Z − where hαβ(σ) is an auxiliary world-sheet metric. This metric is related to the induced metric Gαβ(σ), up to a Weyl rescaling, by the h equation of motion. The AdS/CFT dictionary implies that 2 ′√ 2 R = α λ and gYM =4πgs, (6) where λ = g2 N is the ’t Hooft parameter of the dual CFT, which is = 4 super Yang– YM N Mills theory with gauge group U(N). 3 Strictly speaking, this describes the Poincar´epatch of AdS5. 3 2 Supermatrices and supergeometry In order to add fermionic degrees of freedom, it is convenient to introduce Grassmann coor- dinates. Towards this end, let us first discuss supermatrices, which we write in the form4 a ζb S = , ζ = e−iπ/4 (7) ζc d a and d are 4 4 matrices of Grassmann-even numbers referring to SU(4) and SU(2, 2). On × the other hand, b and c are 4 4 matrices of Grassmann-odd numbers that transform as × bifundamentals, (4, 4¯) and (4¯, 4), of the two groups. The “superadjoint” is defined by a† ζc† S† = − . (8) ζb† d† − † † † † † This definition ensures that (S1S2) = S2S1 and (S ) = S, as one can easily verify. By definition, a unitary supermatrix satisfies SS† = I, where I is the unit matrix, and an antihermitian supermatrix satisfies S + S† = 0.5 In this way one defines the super Lie group SU(2, 2 4) and the super Lie algebra su(2, 2 4). The “supertrace” is defined (as usual) by | | strS = tr a tr d. (9) − The main virtue of this definition is that str(S1S2) = str(S2S1). (10) Note also that str I = 0, since the a and d blocks are both 4 4. The psu(2, 2 4) algebra, × | which is the one that is required, does not have a supermatrix realization.